Trying to write a chronological history for the Emerson
Arcadia 2001 would be almost impossible. It was born, it died,
and it was forgotten, almost in the same breath. It was a blip
on video gamers' radar for a brief moment, and then it was
gone.

This gaming system had the misfortune of being born into
"interesting times." Whether it was a live birth or not is
still up for debate. The system came out at the same time that
much better systems came onto the market — the Atari
5200 and ColecoVision
— which made the Arcadia instant bargain-bin fodder upon
arrival. The game-buying public paid it little attention when
it was new, and over time, it became a vague footnote in game
history.

The console itself has a few unusual traits about it. It
was intended to be a portable console, so it is smaller than
most of its contemporaries. It is fed by a standard 12-volt
car/boat/camper type power supply. (Of course, you have to
also own a portable television to take advantage of the
"portability" feature.) There are two controllers that are
very similar to the Intellivision
control pads, but with a lighter touch on the side buttons.
The round control discs have screw holes in their centers, so
that you can make them into a mini joystick. The controllers
accept overlays, which came with most if not all games.

Simply put, most modern gamers just don't seem to
understand why the system was ever created. Collectors saw
what finally hit their local store shelves, scratched their
heads in confusion, and wondered just what Emerson must have
been smoking when they decided to enter the 1982 video game
market with this particular set of products?

Many modern collectors consider the system to have
been dead upon arrival, in terms of popularity and market
share. In a statistical study, Ward Shrake of Digital
Archaeology: Arcadia 2001 (the author of this article)
found that only one cartridge collector in ten bothered to
collect for this system. As it turned out, these people bought
any old game they found; they were not seeking Arcadia games
out, specifically. It seemed like only the most hardcore "I
collect everything" game collectors paid this system any
attention. Even then, it was usually more out of a sense of
duty than real interest in the game system itself. It was all
largely just an afterthought to them.

Trying to dig up enough historical context to understand
this system was a real chore, since it got little press when
it was new, and even that was largely forgotten or ignored in
modern times. The comments made by the system's makers was
confusing at best, since almost none of what was originally
said ended up happening in real life. Research taught us that
the products that hit the clearance bins almost upon arrival
were never what Emerson had originally planned. To understand
the Arcadia, you have to be able to mentally separate intent
from action. Never mind what the system's makers actually did;
what did they mean to do? What was Emerson's original business
plan? Once you've asked that question, this system has a lot
more appeal, both in terms of game history and wider social
interests.

Emerson's original intent was to make a system that was
measurably more powerful than the market leader at the time —
the venerable Atari
2600. They figured that if their system was better, and
they offered many unauthorized clones of popular arcade games,
then their system was sure to make them rich. They'd have a
better mousetrap, and the public would be beating their doors
down to get it. That's pretty much the accepted wisdom even
now, so why fault Emerson?

Everyone in the industry knew games like Pac-Man,
Defender, Galaxian and the like would sell many
game systems. Emerson even made early press releases openly
naming the arcade favorites they intended to copy. They also
named their new system the Arcadia 2001, to hint at its power
and its promise; popular arcade games at home. But these
promised games never came out (or so it appeared), so players
and collectors have pretty much shunned the system from the
time it was born. Everyone assumed these arcade clones were
just fictions. It now appears they were written and ready to
go.

What tripped Emerson up is that the companies that
owned the big arcade games began making money on the side by
selling the right to copy those games onto home consoles.
Companies like Atari, realizing they had to have what amounted
to a monopoly on certain games, paid big to buy many exclusive
home rights. Once they'd bought those rights, Atari began
taking competitors to court, suing big for "copyright
infringement." Long story short, Atari eventually won some
large settlements from their competitors. This had a chilling
effect on the actions of virtually every other player in the
market, both large and small.

Needless to say, this landmine seriously hurt Emerson's
chances of competing in the marketplace. They had to scramble
to change their suddenly illegal games, to make them less
obvious copies. On top of the delay and expense that must have
cost them, my research makes it appear that they also had
already paid to have thousands of these now-illegal games put
into permanent ROM format. These were now all worthless and
unusable, for legal reasons. Emerson worked around these
problems as best they could, still intending to compete in the
marketplace, trying to make their money back.

Then Coleco dropped their secret weapon — the ColecoVision
— onto the market. It went off like a nuclear weapon, wiping
out the chances of just about every small or late player on
the market at that time. The system specs for the ColecoVision
system were so much better than everyone else's that all
Emerson could do to try to compete was to lie to the media,
inflating their system's specs in a desperate attempt to catch
up. (For instance, they claimed to have 28k of RAM memory when
they actually had 1k.) The media saw through it, got upset,
and gave the system and its games lukewarm reviews at launch.
It was over before it began. Closeouts quickly followed.

The first memory most gamers at the time have of this
system was of seeing it go directly to the bargain bins upon
release. Even if researched it at that time, you would have
just found out about Emerson's promised arcade game clones,
which is not what came out. Most people looked at the
available evidence, concluded that Emerson was just lying in
their original press releases (as they did in later ones),
shrugged, and moved on down the store aisles to where the new
Atari 5200 or ColecoVision systems were. A few diehards did
keep track of the carts they found in the wild, but altogether
the system and its games were already off the radar scope.

Games

The Arcadia's game library is not very large; there
are only 51 unique carts, not counting label and name
variations. (That figure includes 10 carts rumored to exist,
but unconfirmed by collectors.) Three quarters of the
confirmed carts have already been found and digitally archived
(see The
Vault. A few fan favorites are Cat Trax, Tanks A
Lot, Hobo, and Star Chess. The games for
this system are what you would expect for a 1982 era game
console; a mostly black background with a few abstract,
colored blobs here and there on the screen. They have been
described as "a cross between Odyssey˛
and Intellivision" in terms of graphics.

The cartridges are a "label variation" fan's wildest
fantasy. There are at least three different types of case
styles and artwork, with variations on each. Emerson-family
carts come in two different lengths of black plastic cases;
the short style is similar to Atari 2600 carts in overall
size. This family uses a unique "sketch" type of picture
label. MPT-03 family cart cases (see below) resemble Super NES
carts in size and shape, except that they are molded in brown
plastic. Their labels look much more modern and stylized, with
only a minimal picture on each. There are also a family of
what look like pirate carts, that look nothing like the others
in shape, size or label artwork. And yet the games inside each
are identical!

In the wake of the system's passing, some
interesting things happened which are just now being
rediscovered. With the information-sharing capabilities of the
Internet, and many dedicated game aficionados worldwide, we
now know that some of the Emerson system's later titles were
licensed versions of little-known arcade games such as Jump
Bug, Route 16 and Jungler. Thanks to
emulators like MAME,
we can even compare these games to the originals and see they
were not bad copies.

We now understand that many of the games that
Emerson worked on exist in two different versions: the
original version they intended for American release but which
ended up being sold overseas, and the American release
version, which was changed enough to be a "legal" clone of
whatever arcade game it was based on. But this is not the sort
of thing that a manufacturer admits to, so we had to figure it
out by collecting and comparing cartridges. The ROM chips that
Emerson had made, that could not be sold in the U.S., somehow
found their way into other hands overseas. There, they became
the games they were originally intended to be. These ROM chips
were sold for what we've now come to recognize as an entire
family of Emerson-compatible systems: the MPT-03 system
and its clones.

The reason no previous collector knew for sure that
the MPT-03 system was compatible is that the cartridges are
nothing like those on the Arcadia 2001. Both their size and
their pin layouts are totally different, so cartridges were
not directly interchangeable. But we have since torn some
apart, and found out that the ROMs inside are identical. (If
you change the chips out, or play the games via emulation, you
find they were obviously meant for the original Arcadia
system. And some obvious Emerson-sounding MPT-03 game names
turned out to be 100% byte-for-byte identical to their U.S.
releases.)

The system's library is still very confusing. Trying to
track down someone that has a certain game, and to get them to
try to compare it to another game that they might never have
seen, is obviously going to lead to problems with accuracy. It
is very difficult, without comparing cartridges side-by-side
(or byte-by-byte) to see which games are really just renamed
versions of a game you already knew about, and which are
formerly undiscovered "different" game variants. In time, all
of this will be straightened out. A great deal of progress has
already been made in the accuracy department.

Mysterious, rumored games like Crazy Climber were
never found on any directly compatible Emerson system, but
they were definitely made for the internally compatible MPT-03
system. This explains what happens to the games that Emerson
announced early on, but seemingly never made. Emerson was not
lying when they said they intended to make these games. Most
of them were already made, or were in the final stages of
development, when Emerson found out they could not release
them.

Understanding this history even led to an increased
understanding of a few unclaimed "pirate" games for the Atari
2600 system. It appears that at least a small number of
previous Arcadia 2001 titles were ported over, sometime in
1983, after the Arcadia had faded. Cat Trax was one of
these; see also Funky Fish and Pleiades. A
number of other games with Emerson-sounding names are being
looked at more closely, in an effort to find out more about
their history.

Does any of this really make the Arcadia 2001 a more
interesting video game system? For myself and a handful of
other gamers, yes, it does. Does this mean that the Emerson
should enjoy "mainstream" status, within the retro-gaming
community? That's a personal decision that each of us has to
make. But at least you can make an informed decision.